Sample:
Keira Costello is a thirtysomething wife, mother and journalist. She's planning to improve her career prospects by joining a dating site to research a book. But then she discovers that her husband Aidan is already on a dating site and has been having an affair with a younger woman he met online. Chick-lit? Maybe!
Extracted from chapter one.
I could almost taste my son's dismay.
'I can't believe you're seriously thinking about joining a dating site,' Josh wailed. 'These things are full of freaks and perverts! You could end up in a ditch!' he said, upping the rarely-seen filial concern.
We were hanging around outside a burger bar in O'Connell Street, one that was popular with easily-pleased teenagers and harassed mothers with small children. Passers-by were wondering why we'd stopped dead on the middle of the pavement. Josh said, 'Let's go in here. YOU can get one of your crummy rocket salads and Evian water some other time.' I trotted along behind him.
I had just reached our delapidated booth when the inquisition began. Did Elvis talk to me? Why didn't I just make it all up? The readers would never know. Half the stuff in women's magazines was junk anyway.....MY SISTER'S HAVING MY BOYFRIEND'S BABY....WHEN YOU REALLY NEED A CHEMICAL PEEL....WHY I DISOWNED MY MOTHER....
'So you're waiting for Aidan to go away and visit his nut-job sister so you can gallivant around Limerick and have sex with guys you meet online?' Josh asked me.
I should have realized that a judgemental seventeen-year-old was the last person to be my new best friend here. He had his reputation to think of. How many lads' mothers were given Kate Moss's phone number and cast-off bags? That's what Josh had told his gullible friends, the ones repeating the final year in school. He'd never live it down. I might end up meeting the weird guy down the road, the clown in the rockabilly hairstyle.
'This is for my research!' I said, noticing the bench was sticky. Orange squash had spread across it in a map of Australia shape. 'I'm planning to write a book from the research and finally have some decent career prospects, instead of festering on Avanti! magazine. Besides, I'm only interviewing women. Remember? I specialize in women's personal stories.'
'Josh gave me a 'Tell that to the judge!' look and went back to his over-priced Hawaian burger.
'Everyone says you're really good-looking,' he said grudgingly. 'Of course I never say that myself. It's just that any woman who can walk and breathe would be taking her life in her hands with some of those tossers.'
As mayo and relish squirted from the sides of his bun I realized that the pair of us had got into the slightly pathetic habit of lunching in town the day before Aidan went away anywhere. Only Aidan hadn't gone away anywhere for months. Instead he'd been driving me slowly but surely towards the psychiatric ward of Limerick Regional Hospital, by working from home three days a week since he resigned his job. Josh read my mind.
'You must be delighted to see the back of him for a few days. He's been a real arse since just after Christmas, and this is July! Maybe he's still mad over that guy who tried to chat you up in HMV.'
I remembered HIM. He was handsome, about twenty-five. He'd asked me to meet him again so he could lend me a DVD of some obscure French movie. It was time to change the subject. I said, 'You and Flora used to belong to some friendship site. Maybe you could give me a few pointers.'
My son stared at me as if I was after information on how to pull off a bank job.
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